“Minty.”
“Yum, yum,” said Jock. “Sounds like something that comes with a shoulder of lamb.” He laughed, but not unkindly. “I can’t call you that.”
“It’s Araminta really.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Minty, Minty, the rick-stick Stinty, round tail, bobtail, well done, Minty.” He laughed into her incredulous face. “I shall call you Polo.”
She thought about it, understood. He didn’t have to explain. “I’m Jock. John, really, but everyone calls me Jock. Live round here, do you?”
“Syringa Road.”
He shook his head. “I’m a stranger here myself but I soon won’t be. I’ve got a place up in Queen’s Park, I moved in on Saturday.” He glanced at her hands. “You’re not married, are you, Polo? You’ve got a boyfriend though, I’m sure you have, just my luck as usual.”
She thought of Auntie who was dead and of Agnes going off to Australia. “I haven’t got anybody.”
He didn’t like that. She couldn’t tell why but he didn’t. She’d said it very seriously, of course she had, it was serious to her. To make it better she tried to smile. The gin had gone straight to her head, though she’d only sipped a few mouthfuls of it.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll make you laugh. Now listen. Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drownded. Who was saved?”
It was easy. “Pinch Me.”
He did so. Very gently on her upper arm. “Caught you out, Polo.”
She didn’t laugh. “I ought to be going.”
She thought he’d try to stop her but he didn’t. “Here, have one for the road.” He offered her not a drink but a Polo mint. “I’ll walk you home. I’ve not got my car with me.”
She didn’t believe in the car. Not then. Besides, if he’d had one and offered to drive her she’d have refused. She knew all about not taking lifts from strange men. Or sweets. They might be drugs. Wouldn’t being walked home be just as dangerous? She couldn’t refuse; she didn’t know how. He held the pub door open for her. The streets round here were deserted at night except for groups of young men, wandering, filling the width of the pavement, silent but occasionally letting out bestial yells. Or you’d meet just one, loping along to the deafening beat of a ghetto blaster. If she’d been alone, she wouldn’t have risked it; she’d have got the bus. He asked her what was behind the high wall.
“That’s the cemetery.” She didn’t know why she had to add, “My auntie’s ashes are in there.”
“Is that a fact?” He said it as if she’d told him something wonderful, like she’d won the lottery, and from that moment she started liking him. “Your auntie was very important to you, right?”
“Oh, yes. She was like my mother. She left me her house.”
“You deserved it. You were devoted to her and did all sorts of things for her, didn’t you?” She nodded, speechless. “You had a reward for your good services.”
Syringa Road didn’t turn directly out of Harrow Road but out of a turning off it. He read out the street name in the sort of tone you’d use to say Buckingham Palace or Millennium Dome. His voice was lovely, like something sweet and dark brown and smooth, chocolate mousse maybe. But she was afraid he’d want to come in and she wouldn’t know how to stop him. Suppose he tried to kiss her? Laf and Sonovia weren’t in. No lights were on next door. Old Mr. Kroot lived on the other side, but he was eighty-five and wouldn’t be much use.
Jock dispelled her fears. “I’ll wait here and watch you in.”
She took three steps up the path and turned round. Five would have brought her to the door. “Thank you,” she said.
“What for? It’s been a pleasure. Are you in the phone book, Polo?”
“Auntie was. Miss W. Knox.”
If she hadn’t wanted him to phone she should have said she wasn’t in the book, which was true. She wasn’t. But maybe she did want him to phone her. He went off whistling. The tune was “Walk On By,” the one about being strangers when we meet.
Jock wasted no time. He phoned her the next day. It was in the early evening, she’d just got home from Immacue and was having a wash. No good thinking she could get to the phone when she was all wet and her hair dripping. She let it ring. It would only be Sonovia wanting to tell her something about what Corinne had done this time or the prize Julianna had won or where Florian had come in his exams. The phone rang again while she was arranging cold ham slices and cold boiled potatoes and cubes of cucumber on a plate for her supper, with a chocolate mousse she’d made herself to follow. The voice that was like the mousse said it was Jock and would she come to the cinema with him.
“I might,” Minty said, and then she said, “All right.”
That was how it began.
Josephine said, Had she found out if he was married? Sonovia said she knew nothing about him and would she like Laf to check on Jock’s antecedents, which he could easily do on the police computer. When she told him, Laf said was she joking, a guy with a name like John Lewis? There’d be thousands of them. Not to mention the department store. Minty didn’t much like any of this. It wasn’t their business. How would they like it if she started checking up on their friends? Laf and Sonovia thought a lot too much of themselves, just because he was the first black policeman in the UK to have been made a sergeant. It made her keener on Jock than she might have been without their interference.
She and Jock met in the pub and went to the cinema. After that he came in what he called the “boneshaker” to 39 Syringa Road to call for her. The car was about twenty years old but at least it was clean, he’d taken it into the car wash on the way. Sonovia was on the watch from behind her frilly lace curtains but had to go away two minutes before he arrived because Julianna was on the phone. One day he called for Minty at Immacue. Afterward Josephine went on and on about how good-looking he was, as if she was surprised at Minty finding anyone like that. Next time Jock came in Josephine happened to be sitting on the counter where she could show off her legs in her Wolford Neon Glanz tights. If Jock was impressed he didn’t show it. He took Minty to the dog races at Walthamstow and he took her bowling. She’d never been anywhere like that in her life before.
It was a long time before she plucked up her courage and asked him if he was married. At the time he was humming that song about walk on by, wait on the corner.
“Divorced,” he said. “Don’t mind, do you?”
She shook her head. “Why would I?”
He was in the building trade. His hands would have been in a terrible state if he’d done rough work and they weren’t, so she thought he must be a plumber or maybe an electrician. He never took her to his place in Queen’s Park. She didn’t know if it was a house or a flat or just a room, she knew only that it was in Harvist Road but not the number. He’d no brothers or sisters, no one except his old mother who lived in the West Country that he went to see every couple of weeks, traveling all the way down there by train. When he got divorced he had to let his ex-wife have his house. It was sad.
They’d been going out for six weeks before he kissed her. He put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her face to his. She liked it, which she hadn’t expected. She started washing herself even more. It was important to keep herself nice for Jock, especially now he’d started kissing her. He was clean himself, not so clean as she was, but no one could be. She was proud of that. On a Saturday evening, when they’d been to the Queen’s Head, they brought back Balti takeaway for supper. Well, Jock did. She had a sandwich she made herself and a banana. Jock said he hated bananas, it was like eating sweet soap, and Minty couldn’t help remembering what Auntie’d said about viewing someone who didn’t like them with the deepest suspicion. But what happened next drove all that out of her head. He said he’d like to stay the night. She knew what that meant. He wasn’t talking about dossing down on the front-room couch. He kissed her and she kissed him back but when they got upstairs she left him in the bedroom while she went to have a bath. It worried her that she couldn’t wash her hair but it was no good going to bed with it wet. And she wished the sheets hadn’t been on since Wednesday, she’d have changed them if she’d known what was coming.